The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 83 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 9 (part 1)
p.
180 CHAPTER IX.
GENERATION.
"Let every Brahman, with fixed attention, consider all nature, both visible and invisible, as existing in the Divine Spirit.
For when he contemplates the boundless universe in the Divine Spirit, he cannot give his heart to iniquity."— Manu .
God evolves the centre of light from eternity to eternity within Himself, and likewise there is in the soul of man a desire to penetrate into the second principle and to live in the light of God.
1 "The soul in its substance is a magical gush of fire from the nature of God the Father.
She is an ardent desire for the light.
Thus, God the Father very strongly, and from all eternity, desires his heart, the centre of the light, and He generates it in His desiring will out of the quality of the fire." ( Four Complexions , ii.) "God makes also the second principle in His love, wherefrom He generates from eternity to eternity His eternal word and heart, and the spirit ignites the bond of nature, and renders it luminous in the love and the life of His heart by the power of the light.
Likewise the soul of man desires to penetrate into the second principle, and to still its hunger with the power of God." ( Threefold Life , i.
11–13.) But if the soul, as has been the case with Adam, does p.
181 not surrender her will to God, then will the divine idea not become annihilated, but is rendered inactive in man.
"The soul has the seven qualities of the inner spiritual world (modified) according to nature; but the spirit is without any qualities; it is outside of nature and in the unity of God.
By means of its fiery nature the spirit becomes manifest in the soul, because it is the true likeness of God, an idea wherein God Himself acts and resides, provided that the soul enters with her desire into God and surrenders her will to Him.
If this does not take place, then will that idea, namely, the spirit, be mute and inactive, like a picture in a mirror that has faded and is without substance, as was the case with Adam in his fall." ( Tabulæ Principæ , 66.) "It should not be supposed that the celestial Ego of man had become a nothing.
It has remained in him, but in his (personal) life it was then like a nothing.
It was then hidden in God and inconceivable to man, and without (manifested) life." ( Mysterium , xx.
28.) "The essence of the soul, that issued from the unfathomable will, has not died.
Nothing can destroy it.
It remains for ever a free will.
But it lost the divine state, wherein was burning the light of God and the fire of His love.
Not that the latter has become a nothing, although within the created soul it became like nothing (unmanifested), and unconscious; but the holy power, that is to say, the spirit of God, which was the active life therein, became hidden." ( Grace , vi.
2.) If the soul thus permits her true light and life to be extinguished, then it naturally follows that her opposite power, the principle of wrath, becomes perceptible (conscious) in her.
1 "As the word or heart of God takes its origin in the light of the majesty, in the eternal fire-tincture of the p.
182 [paragraph continues] Father, likewise is this the case with the image of the soul.
The true image of God resides in the light of the soul-fire, and the fiery soul must draw that light from the love-fountain in God, in His majesty, by means of her imagination in God, and surrender of her self-will to God.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
Terms like 'fire-tincture', 'generation', and 'qualities' reflect alchemical metaphors for spiritual transformation.
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
The parallel drawn between God generating His word and the soul's desire to penetrate the second principle mirrors this doctrine.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The structure of the soul's qualities is described as modified according to nature, reflecting the divine spiritual world.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The soul must surrender her will to God for the divine idea to become active.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
[auto] The text describes God generating the centre of light, second principle, and eternal word from within Himself.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The principle of wrath becomes perceptible only when the true light and life are extinguished.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The passage begins with a quote about fixed attention and contemplating the universe in the Divine Spirit.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The passage draws a parallel between God generating His word/heart and the image of the soul mirroring this divine process.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The fall of Adam is described as the soul losing the divine state where the light of God burned, rendering the spirit inactive.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The soul is described as a gush of fire from the nature of God, capable of becoming active with the spirit of God.